Grant for FFU researcher Aletta Kraneveld

Aletta Kraneveld (Pharmaceutical Sciences) has been awarded a LIFT subsidy from NWO’s Chemistry Innovation Fund. The subsidy is meant for research with an external firm that should lead to innovative applications.

Aletta Kraneveld will join Jeroen van Bergenhenegouwen (Nutricia Research) to study how mother’s milk sugars bind to the cell. Milk oligosaccharides are unique sugar structures in mother’s milk. In addition to being ‘food for bugs’ in the intestines, these sugars are also important for the child’s immune system and brain development. However, scientists are as yet uncertain exactly how and where these sugars function with the cells.

Kraneveld and Van Bergenhenegouwen aim to make tiny changes to the sugars at the molecular level, without making them lose their function. They will then develop methods to determine how and where these sugars bond to and in the cell. The technique they develop may eventually be used to characterise the binding proteins in these unique sugars.